InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Future Beginnings ❯ Ch 5: Transitioning ( Chapter 5 )

INUYASHA BELONGS TO RUMIKO TAKAHASHI.

 

Ch. 5: Transitioning

 

 

Inuyasha's new friends insisted he come along with them to a party at Peter's dorm. As they dragged him along the path, over a bridge and through what he'd come to think of as his little hunting area at the school village, they taught him some useful English words.

 

“Beer,” said Peter, holding up a shiny can. He took a swig. “Say it—be-e-er.” He passed the can to Inuyasha, who took a swig also.

 

“Beer,” he repeated. It was pretty good, although he wasn't sure he would like it as much in demon form when his senses were sharper. He handed the empty can back to Peter.

 

“Yeah!” said Peter. “We're going to drink lots of beer at the party. “It'll be fun. There will be lots of hot girls there.”

 

“You can't teach him that!” protested Susan. “Don't say `hot girls.' That's not very nice.”

 

Inuyasha repeated his growing repertoire of words. “Beer, hot girls, eat, drink, party, dorm, night go.” He repeated them all the way to the party, which was in several small rooms and in the hallway outside the rooms.

 

“Hey guys, this is Miroku. We think he's from Japan.” Peter announced to the room at large. “We're teaching him English.”

 

Inuyasha heard “Hi, Miroku” from half the people in the room before another beer was shoved into his hands. He glanced around, wondering if Kagome was here too, but he didn't see her. Peter and Susan drifted off, leaving Inuyasha to himself. He found an empty chair and sat down with his back against a wall, one bare foot up on the chair, the other on the floor and watched people drink beer and laugh with each other. A few times one or another hot girl would come up to him and try to teach him a few more words of English. It wasn't a bad way to learn, he thought, drinking down another beer.

 

As the night passed, fewer and fewer people remained drinking beer at this party. Inuyasha had no idea what had happened to Peter and Susan. The beer made him sleepy and a little melancholy. He wondered if he should try to find Kagome.

 

He stood up, swayed, then started to walk carefully towards the door.

 

“See you, Miroku!” called one of the hot girls.

 

“'Bye!” called someone else. “What dorm are you in? Do you need a ride home?”

 

Inuyasha shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't understand what they were saying. “'Bye.” he repeated, and kept on walking. He retraced his steps across the little bridge to the wild area. In his human form it would take him a long time to find Kagome's little house. He had hidden his regular clothes in a tree on the edge of this small forest area. He changed back, strapped on Tetsusaiga, and settled a bit unsteadily in the tree to wait for the dawn.

 

The familiar pulse of energy that signified his change woke him at sunrise. He sniffed delicately, slightly offended by his own odor. He definitely wouldn't try beer as a hanyou, he decided. Hopping down from his high branch, he strode along the same pathway he had taken the night before as a human. It was early enough that no one else was awake yet, so he had the whole school village to himself. He wondered if the food place was open yet, but then he realized that he couldn't go in there in his current form anyway.

 

Time to check up on Kagome, he decided, recapturing his train of thought from the night before. In moments he was bounding across the school village and across the black roads to Kagome's little village. Again he was reminded of how much easier everything was for him as a hanyou. There really wasn't much he enjoyed about being human, aside from the food. Everything was so much more real when he was in his hanyou form.

 

He slowed down as he approached the house where Kagome lived with her two friends. They were all still sleeping, but he didn't want to take the chance that Kagome would sense him. He definitely didn't want a repeat of last time. He peered in through her bedroom window and saw her asleep on the bed, a book fallen open on the floor beside her.

 

“My Kagome,” he thought fondly. “Never far from a book.”

 

She looked tired. As he leaned forward to peer at her more closely, she stirred in her sleep, twisting around to face the window. He quickly pulled his head back. Kagome stretched and opened her eyes, staring right at the window. In an instant, Inuyasha had leaped from his branch to the top of the roof so that she wouldn't see him. This was going to be difficult. If he was going to keep an eye on her, he needed to stay nearby, but he didn't want her to know he was watching. With any other human, this wouldn't be a problem. Their senses were practically dead. But Kagome was different.

 

He thought about that for a moment. Kagome was different. He liked that about her. He liked that she knew when he was around, that she knew what he was and she didn't mind. So he would just have to be very careful around her for a while, until he figured out a way to let her know he wasn't going anywhere. She would just have to get used to having him around, in all his forms. Besides, now that he knew about beer and parties, he was very sure he didn't want her trying either one of them!

 

He waited until Kagome and the other hot girls left for school, then he waited a little longer in case one of them decided to come back. When he was fairly confident that they were finally gone, he tried to open Kagome's window and slip in the same way he had done last time. The window wouldn't budge. He felt his temper beginning to build. She locked the window on him? No, no, no. This wasn't going to happen. He wrenched on the window one last time, but he didn't want to destroy it utterly, although he was tempted. He hopped down to the lower level, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching from one of the other attached houses in the square. It was clear, so he grabbed the front door and pulled, fully expecting it to be locked, too. It opened easily, so he slipped inside and went upstairs.

 

No ramen this time, he decided, as he rummaged through the cabinets. He ignored the round styrofoam containers and instead found an opened bag of chips. Unclipping the chips, he flopped down onto the couch and turned on the TV. More English. He switched stations but every one showed people who spoke in English. Finally he found a program of colorful fuzzy creatures who spoke English in high annoying voices, but they spoke it slowly and they explained a lot of words. Apparently `hot' had more than one meaning. He would have to ask Kagome about it when they were on speaking terms again.

 

He wandered down to the bathroom on the lower level and smelled Kagome's scent on one of the towels. He held it for a minute, burying his face in it and inhaling deeply. Unfortunately, he caught a whiff of his own beer and smoke scent too. He needed to get rid of that smell.

 

He locked the bathroom door and carefully hung Tetsusaiga on the hook next to Kagome's towel, then turned on the shower and adjusted the water like she had shown him in her house in Tokyo. There was no place to rinse off first here, so he just stepped into the tub, clothes and all, and let the shower run all over him. He fumbled for some of the smelly hair stuff on the shelf, poured it into his hands and scrubbed his hair, being careful not to get too much water in his ears. The fire rat robe was for the most part resistant to stains and other damage, and like him, it was self-repairing overnight. Luckily, it dried quickly too.

 

He turned off the water when he was done, yelping a little when he turned off the hot and had a few seconds of only cold water. Then he shook all over like the dog he could sometimes be. People didn't give him credit for learning from his mistakes. He knew better than to shake on the outside of the shower curtain. It would make the whole bathroom all wet. So he shook off the water first, then stepped out of the shower. His fire rat robe was practically dry. He had really felt the need to give it, as well as himself, a decent cleaning after the beer party. Next time he'd give this shower thing a try without it.

 

He grabbed Kagome's towel and wrapped it around his hair, piling it on top of his head like he'd seen her do so many times before. When he opened the door a cloud of steam rolled out. Nobody was home yet. He had a little more time. Grabbing Tetsusaiga off the hook and putting it through his belt, he wandered back upstairs and into Kagome's bedroom.

 

“First I need to fix this,” he muttered, walking over to Kagome's locked window. He roughly twisted the little metal things on the top of the bottom half of the window until he heard them pop. Now they twisted completely around. Experimentally, he opened and shut the window a few times, then he carefully positioned the little metal things so that they still looked like they were locked. Nobody gave him enough credit for thinking things through, either. It just looked like he solved every problem with violence. He didn't advertise it when he used his brain. This time, it would work to his advantage.

 

He shook out his hair, glanced thoughtfully at the hairbrush lying on Kagome's dresser, then decided against trying it. Before he left, he hung Kagome's towel back on its hook downstairs in the bathroom. No one would ever know that he had been there, he thought smugly.

 

 

Kagome threw her books down on her bed, rummaged in her closet long enough to grab her purse, and ran quickly back downstairs. She paused at the door as her roommate called out, “Kagome, did you take my chips?”

 

“No, aren't they in the cabinet?”

 

Her roommate came to the top of the stairs shaking an almost empty bag of chips. “Nope.”

 

“I'll pick up another bag at the store,” Kagome promised as she ran out the door. One of her classmates had a car and they were going shopping.

 

Inuyasha watched sullenly from the rooftop. He knew that word—shopping. He thought it was Japanese since Kagome used to say it so often when they were in her time in Tokyo. He didn't bother following the car since he didn't particularly enjoy shopping, unless it was for ramen. Instead, he dropped down to Kagome's window and silently slid it open and slipped into her room. He picked up and quickly set down her alarm clock, recognizing it from the time he had broken it once before. Next he picked up a small stuffed cat, shook it, and tossed it into the air a few times. Her room was permeated with her scent. He found it calming. He moved her books to the foot of the bed and laid down, arms behind his head. It was a good thing Kagome didn't have a sharp nose, he thought, since his scent was all over her things now.

 

After a while he heard the front door open and close. Good. Kagome's friend left, probably to get dinner. He knew from watching them that this one usually went back over to the school village to eat dinner in a larger food place than the one he had visited when he met Peter and Susan. Inuyasha really wished he could try this larger food place. He guessed he would have to wait until his next moonless night to give it a try.

 

The other girl who lived downstairs was hardly ever there. She dressed in black a lot and stayed at the school village until very late. Sometimes she didn't come back at all. And Kagome was shopping. That meant that he had some time to himself.

 

Inuyasha let himself out of Kagome's room and opened the refrigerator in the little cooking area. He found an apple and some red drink in a clear bottle and - cans of beer? Kagome had beer? He wasn't sure he liked that. He took the three cans of beer to the sink. One by one he squeezed them, letting his claws puncture the cans until all the liquid drained out. There. Now he didn't have to worry about Kagome drinking beer. He threw the empty cans into the trash and washed the beer stench off his claws with dish soap.

 

He took his apple and sat in front of the TV. It was too late for his show, so he watched the news, catching about one word in twenty. With his claws he sliced the apple into quarters, then ate the pieces seeds and all.

 

 

Kagome came in with her classmate and the third roommate. All of them had their arms full.

 

“Just put the bags on the table,” directed Kagome. “Thank you, Jen, for helping us carry all this stuff in.”

 

“No problem. My rehearsal got cancelled so I'm home early tonight.” said Jen. “I just want to sit back and relax for a change.” She walked over to the refrigerator.

 

“Hey, who drank my beer!”